xtreme deference for the ecclesiastics around her was a misfortune
for her people, but, consistently with the best points in her
character, it could not have been otherwise. She was humane, just, and
reasonable in all matters not influenced by the religious bigotry of
the age. She declared the American Indians free, and ordered the
instant return of several cargoes of them which had been sent to Spain
for slaves.

After a successful and glorious reign of thirty years, Isabella the
Catholic died, on the 26th of November, 1504, in the fifty-fourth year
of her age. Her last years were clouded with the deepest melancholy.
The insanity and misfortunes of her daughter Joanna, and the domestic
afflictions of her daughter Catherine of Arragon, lacerated her heart
with sorrow. She pined away in her lonely grandeur, till the deep and
long-protracted melancholy invaded her constitution, and settled into
a rapid and fatal decline.

The chief traits of Isabella's character may be gathered from the
preceding narrative, to which we subjoin the parallel drawn between
her and Elizabeth of England, by Mr. Prescott, whose "History" so ably
and satisfactorily unfolds the events of her reign.

"It is in these more amiable qualities of her sex, that Isabella's
superiority becomes most apparent over her illustrious namesake,
Elizabeth of England, whose history presents some features parallel to
her own. Both were disciplined in early life by the teachings of that
stern nurse of wisdom, adversity. Both were made to experience the
deepest humiliation at the hands of their nearest relative, who should
have cherished and protected them. Both succeeded in establishing
themselves on the throne, after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each
conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a
height of glory which it never before reached. Both lived to see the
vanity of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an
inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an illustrious name,
unrivalled in the annals of their country.

"But with these few circumstances of their history, the resemblance
ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact.
Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's
temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coarse, and irascible, while with
these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange
irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of
royal s